By the time President Donald Trump stood on a South Carolina stage and declared to a roaring crowd that concerns over coronavirus were “a hoax,” the virus had already killed two people in King County. We just didn’t know it yet.
Trump’s rally was on Friday, February 28. A day later, Seattle learned about the first fatality from COVID-19, the deadly flu-like disease. By Sunday, the death toll had risen to two, and a doctor from the Kirkland hospital where the first patient died told reporters, “What we’re seeing is the tip of the iceberg.”
He was right.
Over the next week, the number of deaths climbed, confirmed coronavirus cases skyrocketed, and Seattle became enveloped in a slow-motion crisis where the killer wasn’t hurricane winds or asphyxiating wildfire smoke but instead a silent and invisible virus.
